The Adventures of Captain Underpants
The Adventures of Captain Underpants is a children's book by Dav Pilkey, the first novel in the Captain Underpants series. Plot The story begins with the kinky school troublemakers, George Beard and Harold Hutchins, two boys who are known by most every one of their teachers as disruptive and rude. George and Harold love to play pranks on the helpless kids and teachers at Jerome Horwitz Elementary School. They are also known schoolwide for the comic book series that they create and sell on the playground, known as "The Adventures of Captain Underpants", their favorite super hero. They have many enemies (all of them being the faculty teachers). But the one who despises them most is the school principal, Mr. Krupp. Mr. Krupp hates them, their pranks, and especially the Captain Underpants comics. He vows to get them one day ("one day very very soon" he claims). One day, the school's football team, the Jerome Horwitz Knuckleheads, is having their biggest game of the year against the Stubinville Stinkbugs. Before the game even starts, the football players, cheerleaders, and band players already experience countless problems with their equipment. Apparently, someone sabotaged the whole game. After many more pranks, the game had to be called off. As the players walk away, we see George and Harold crouching beneath the bleachers, laughing. Of course, they were the ones who did it all. They believe they won't get in trouble for it since they assume there is not proof the teachers can claim to prove they did it. The next day, George and Harold hear an announcement over the school's intercom. They are wanted in Mr. Krupp's office. Once inside, Mr. Krupp shows the two boys that he set up video cameras all over the school, and had caught every single one of George and Harold's pranks on tape. After the tape is over, everyone is silent for a while. Then, George gets the courage to speak up and asks what Mr. Krupp is going to do with the video. Mr. Krupp thinks about it, and decides that he should show it to the school board or George and Harold's parents, but he ultimately decides to show it to the football team so they can see who ruined their big game. George and Harold beg and plead Mr. Krupp to spare them as the football team will kill them for the rest of their lives if they do find out the truth. Mr. Krupp decides not to show the video, as long as George and Harold promise to follow his conditions. Mr. Krupp takes out a stack of paper with countless chores and behavior rules for George and Harold to follow. He also mentions they MUST follow the list exactly otherwise he will show the video to the football team. The next day, George and Harold spend their entire day doing chores for Mr. Krupp, behaving nicely, and completing stacks of homework. To avoid Mr. Krupp's tasks, George buys a 3-D Hypno-Ring (which they receive after 4-6 weeks of back-breaking labor) that they use to hypnotize Mr. Krupp into handing over the incriminating video. Harold replaces it with one of his little sister Heidi's Boomer the Purple Dragon sing along videos. They then begin fooling around. George hypnotizes Mr. Krupp to act as if he were the Amazing Captain Underpants. To their distress, Mr. Krupp, as Captain Underpants, takes the role seriously and departs to fight crime. Captain Underpants confronts two bank robbers, and orders them to "Surrender! Or I will have to resort to Wedgie Power!" The bank robbers fall down in hysterics and are apprehended by the police. The police begin to arrest Captain Underpants too, but George and Harold whisk him to safety on their skateboards. Suddenly, the crystal shop next door explodes, as two robots walk out of it, carrying a very large crystal. Captain Underpants tries to stop them, but his cape gets caught on their van. George and Harold grab onto Captain Underpants's feet, as he is dragged to an old, abandoned warehouse. Captain Underpants then crashes through the door of the warehouse while George and Harold slam into the back of the van. There they meet the evil Dr. Diaper, a mad scientist resembling a baby. As Captain Underpants was in plain view to Dr. Diaper, the robots capture and tie him up. When the cost is clear George and Harold peak into the hole in the door (Captain Underpants created this when he crashed into it) to see what is going on. The villian explains that he plans to use the crystal as part of his Laser-Matic 2000 to blow up the Moon, destroying every major city on earth, so that he can take over the planet. George uses a slingshot to toss fake doggy doo-doo between Dr. Diaper's feet. Dr. Diaper is terribly embarrassed, thinking that he has had an "accident". When he departs to change his diaper, George and Harold incapacitate the robots and untie Captain Underpants. They pull the self-destruct lever on the Laser-Matic 2000 thinking that will turn it off. Dr. Diaper, enraged at the destruction of the Laser-Matic 2000, his robots, and the foiling of his plan to take over the world, aims his Diaper-Matic 2000 ray gun at George, Harold, and Captain Underpants. Captain Underpants shoots a pair of underwear at Dr. Diaper. The underwear covers Dr. Diaper's face, which renders him incapable of defending himself. Before the building exploded, the boys ask the Captain, "Where did you get that extra pair of underwear?" and the reply was, "What extra pair?" while Captain Underpants wore a barrel over himself (stating that Captain Underpants used the underwear he wore against Dr. Diaper, thus completely naked at that time). After the warehouse exploded, Dr. Diaper was sent to the police station. George, Harold, and Captain Underpants return to Mr. Krupp's office. They then want Captain Underpants to dress up like Mr. Krupp, so that nobody in the school would recognize him. The boys try to figure out how to return Mr. Krupp to his normal self, but they've lost the instruction manual for the 3-D Hypno-Ring. They try several times to hypnotize Captain Underpants back into Mr. Krupp, but the methods do not work. As a last resort, George tries dumping water on Mr. Krupp's head. It works, and Mr. Krupp returns to his angry self, resolving to give the video to the football team after all. As it turns out, the team enjoys the Sing-A-Long video so much that they change their name from the Knuckleheads to the Purple Dragon Sing-A-Long Friends. George and Harold go back to their goofy ways with nothing that is threatening to their lives. Unfortunately from this point on, whenever anyone snaps their fingers, Mr. Krupp transforms into Captain Underpants. Ms. Ribble is then shown snapping her fingers after George and Harold disrupt the class with their jokes, Mr. Krupp who was passing by with some coffee unfortunately hears this, becomes Captain Underpants and runs out of the school to fight crime. Harold and George both respond to this with "Oh No!" and "Here we go again!" respectively. Hypno Ring Misunderstood And another thing, after Mr. Krupp is "watered," the ring instructions are found in George's shirt pocket. After being thrown away, you can read on the back of the instruction manual, "WARNING!" "Whatever you do, don't pour water on anybody's head when they are in a trance! This will cause the hypnotized person to slip back and forth from trance to reality whenever they hear they hear the sound of fingers snapping." Despite this, the boys were able to de-hypnotize their teacher through the ring with no problems although considering how they were panicking they may not have thought of trying to use the method used in the fifth book. Comics * The Really Cool Adventures of Captain Underpants Characters Characters that first appear in this book are: *George Beard *Harold Hutchins *Mr. Krupp/Captain Underpants *The Football Team (Knuckleheads/Purple Dragon Sing-A-Long Friends) *Dr. Diaper ("Dr. Nappy" in the British version; a parody of Doctor Doom) *Dr. Diaper's Robots *The Inedible Hunk (in George & Harold's comic; a parody of The Incredible Hulk) *Students *Cheerleaders *The Band *Mr. Meaner (not named) *Ms. Ribble (not named) *Bank robbers *The Police *Little Boy and his Mom *The game spectators *Heidi Hutchins (Harold's sister; mentioned) *Boomer the Purple Dragon (mentioned; a parody of Barney the Purple Dinosaur) *Jason Block (mentioned) *Rosborne (mentioned) *Surgeon General (seen on inside of front cover) Trivia/goofs *Early printings of the book have "The First Epic Novel by Dav Pilkey" instead of "An Epic Novel by Dav Pilkey". *Ms. Ribble is referenced as "the teacher" in the book. *Mr. Meaner is referenced as "the coach" in the book. *The comic in the book had the same name, but Dr. Diaper and his robots weren't seen. *"The Inedible Hunk" is a parody of The Incredible Hulk. *"Dr. Diaper" is a parody of Doctor Doom. *"Weird Al" Yankovic is mentioned in this book. * "Boomer The Purple Dragon" is a parody of Barney the Purple Dinosaur. * In the North American version, the villian is called Dr. Diaper, but in the European version, he is called "Dr. Nappy" ("Nappy" is the European term for Diaper). *The 1991 sci-fi novel Fallen Angels is referenced surrounding the 3D hypno-ring advertisement. *Early printings of the book have the "Little Apple" logo on the cover. *This is the only book where there is no recap comic at the beginning of the book before the first chapter begins. This is because this is the first book of the series. External links *Author's site *Wikipedia Article Category:Books Category:Captain Underpants novels